Turn To Me

TURN TO ME

Dallas Willard in his book, Hearing God, tells the story of a businessman:

Robert C. McFarlane was a well-known businessman in the Los Angeles area. He moved to California from Oklahoma in 1970, and within just a few days of his arrival--due to a disastrous misunderstanding with a close friend--he had to take control of an insurance agency. He did not want it, but he had to make it succeed in order to save the large amount of money he had invested in it.

By the spring of 1973, he was in the third straight year of constant strain and stress in the operation of the business. He had recently been converted through the ministry of the Rolling Hills Covenant Church in Southern California in answer to the prayers of his wife, Betty, and her many Christian friends.

One day that spring, the continual danger of defeat, the dark hours of effort, the frustration at every turn, and the hardened memories of the cause of his financial difficulties came upon him with special force. As he drove toward his office, he suddenly was filled with a frantic urge to turn left onto the road out of town and just disappear. But into the midst of his inner turmoil there came a command: "Pull over to the curb."

As he relates it, it was as if the words were written on the windshield. After he pulled over, there came to him, as though from someone with him in the car, these words: "My Son had strains that you will never know, and when he had those strains, he turned to me, and that’s what you should do."

After hearing these words, Robert sat at the wheel for a long time, sobbing aloud. He then drove on to his Long Beach office, where he faced 22 major, outstanding problems. All the most significant problems--whether they concerned company disagreements, clients deciding to remain with his agency, payments by clients of late premiums, or whatever--were substantially resolved by that day’s end.